BIOGRAPHIES: James B. WHITE, Pepin, Pepin Co., WI

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Submitted by Nance Sampson, Pepin Co. Archives File Manager on 19 November 2004
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**Posted for informational purposes only - submitter is not related to the
subject of this biography and has no further information.

James B. White, farmer, P. O. Pepin, was born in Spring Creek
township, Warren county, Pa., December 22, 1827, and is a son of
Converse B. and Catherine (Carlin) White.  His paternal grandfather
was a Frenchman and his grandmother was a native of Germany. 
Catherine Carlin was a native of Ireland; she died at Meadville, Pa.,
in 1888, aged about ninety-six years.  Converse B. White was born in
Lower Canada, where he remained until about twenty-one years of age,
when he came to the United States and served throughout the war of
1812.  About 1834 he removed with his family to Monmouth, Ill., where
he died two or three years later.  About six months after moving to
Illinois James and an older brother, Sanford, became dissatisfied
because they had no opportunity to attend school, and determined to
return to Pennsylvania.  Running away from home, they walked to
Toledo, Ohio, where they took a steamboat to Erie, Pa., thence
completed their journey on foot to Warren county.  Having been
accustomed to driving oxen almost from the cradle he soon found
employment as a teamster about a farm and saw-mill, which he
continued until about seventeen years old, attending school however,
in the winter.  In the fall of 1843 or 1844 the brothers started for
St. Paul, Minn., by steamer, but the vessel was frozen in at Dubuque,
Iowa, and they continued the journey on foot to Wabasha, walking most
of the way on the ice.  Their intended destination was St. Croix,
where a friend had invited them to join him.  They chopped that
winter on an island at the mouth of the Chippewa, called the "cut
off" and the following March went to Eau Galle mills, where James
made a timber claim, which he sold at a sacrifice in the spring of
1848.  After running donw five or six thousand feet of lumber he made
a claim and built a frame house on what proved to be seciton twenty-
one, township twenty-three, range fifteen, where he still resides. 
At that time the nearest grist-mill was on the St. Croix river twenty
miles above its mouth.  This mill ground only corn and buckwheat, and
it took four or five days to go and return.  While Mr. White was at
Eau Galle a post-office was established at Wabasha, Minn., the first
between Prairie du Chien and Fort Snelling.  Mr. White rented his
farm and ran on the Mississippi river as a pilot nearly every season
from 1850 to 1870.

August 28, 1871, he married Miss Hannah A., daughter of John and
Rachel Cardwell.  Their children are Mattie M., born November 29,
1872; Ettie S., May 29, 1875; James A., March 5, 1877; John C., June
24, 1878; Edward George and Edna Daisy (twins), November 4, 1879;
Albert P., August 2, 1882; Harriet L., February 17, 1884.  Since his
marriage Mr. White has carried on general farming and is now breeding
Scotch Clyde horses.  In his lifetime he has endured a great deal of
privation and hardship.  In 1847 he was lost in the woods for two
days and a night without food and weapons.  Again, in January, 1850,
while going from the Eau Galle upper shanty to Rush river with a
single companion, he was obliged to encamp in the woods and came very
near freezing to death.  This was one of the coldest nights ever
known in this section.

-Transcribed from the "Historical & Biographical Album of the
Chippewa Valley Wisconsin, 1891-2," page 670.


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